Shades of the monarchy in Hollande's Trierweiler statement

When François Hollande telephoned the Agence France Presse on Saturday evening to announce the end of his nine-year relationship with Valérie Trierweiler, he stressed that he was calling as Hollande the private citizen, not as president of France.

"I make it known that I have put an end to the life I shared with Valérie Trierweiler," Hollande dictated to the news agency. He said it concerned his "private life", but the 18-word repudiation sounded more monarchical than any previous Hollande statement.

One thinks of Cromwell in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, saying: "The king wants another woman." Of Henry VIII dispatching Anne Boleyn to the Tower of London; of Napoleon abandoning Josephine; and the Shah of Iran divorcing his first wife Soraya.

Hollande made the telephone call from the Élysée Palace, which was given by Louis XV to an earlier favorite, Madame de Pompadour. Trierweiler appeared to be joking when she told a journalist "François has no feelings". Perhaps she meant it.

Loyal in adversity
The ex-first lady has reminded visitors that she believed in Hollande when he was "Monsieur 3 per cent", stuck in the nether regions of opinion polls, and that he wouldn't have become president without her.

Now it's goodbye to Trierweiler's five Élysée staff, who cost taxpayers €19,742 monthly. A poll published by Le Parisien at the weekend showed 54 per cent of French people believe presidents' partners should no longer enjoy special status nor have means at their disposal.

It’s goodbye to the chauffeur-driven cars, servants and bodyguards. An exception was made yesterday when an Élysée car drove Trierweiler from the rental in the 15th arrondissement to which she’s been banished to Roissy airport, en route for Mumbai.

Because of the media interest in Trierweiler's first public appearance since Closer magazine revealed Hollande's affair with the actor Julie Gayet on January 10th, she's been assigned a bodyguard, one last time, while she raises funds for the humanitarian organisation Action Contre la Faim.

Trierweiler’s entourage quashed rumours that an attempted suicide preceded her eight-day hospitalisation. It was just a fraction of a sleeping pill too many, because she couldn’t sleep, they said. When she left hospital, it was for the presidential residence La Lanterne, on the grounds of Versailles, her way of marking her territory, of saying, “I’m still first lady”.

Last week, Trierweiler and Hollande’s lawyers negotiated financial compensation of an unknown amount and a non-disclosure agreement. The erstwhile couple lunched together on Thursday to complete it. They are reportedly on good terms, though Trierweiler did not answer her mobile phone when Hollande called her on Friday night in a last attempt to secure a joint statement.

Back in 2007, Ségolène Royal made the announcement herself. “I asked François Hollande to leave home, to live out his romance on his own,” she said.

Twice, Hollande’s relationships have overlapped by two years. Trierweiler did not accept that it was over, and refused to be a party to the announcement, forcing Hollande to take responsibility for the rupture.

Trierweiler's employer, Paris Match, has assured her she will keep her salary and column. But it must have been a stab to the heart to find her usurper, Gayet, on the cover of the magazine, with the subtitle "the discreet one".

Indiscreet tweet
Trierweiler, it's understood, was not discreet. The disintegration of her relationship with Hollande is traced to the tweet she sent in support of Royal's rival in the June 2012 legislative election. It's now known that Hollande began seeing Gayet during his 2012 presidential campaign, and she was reportedly despondent at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, just after Trierweiler assumed the role of first lady.

So although Trierweiler’s tweet angered Hollande, it may have been a pretext. It shocked the French public, and she became the least loved French first lady, with an 8 per cent approval rating. She tweeted again on Saturday night, thanking “the extraordinary staff at the Élysée. I shall never forget their devotion nor the emotion when I left.”

While Trierweiler campaigns against hunger in India this week, and Hollande visits Turkey, Gayet will be dubbing Nicole Kidman in Grace of Monaco. She and Hollande have not seen each other since the Closer revelations, but talk on the telephone.

Gayet’s loft near Père Lachaise cemetery has been engulfed by paparazzi. She had to telephone Europe 1 radio station to deny rumours she was pregnant.

A scion of the caviar left, Gayet says she loves taking the metro because it’s “a dive into real life, the real life of real people”. For recreation, she repairs to the family château in the southwestern Gers department. That was where she introduced Hollande to her parents last August 3rd, over lunch.